ARTICLES ABOUT VILLAIN BY DATE - PAGE 5

Broadway musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" has found itself a new bad guy, with Robert Cuccioli tapped to replace Patrick Page as the villainous Green Goblin. Page, who exits the tuner next month, has been with the musical since it began its rocky preview period in November 2010. His performance was one of the show's most favorably received elements throughout its long development process, and eventually the role -- which encompasses both the Goblin and his alter ego, Norman Osborn -- was expanded, in part thanks to the favorable response.

Story By Nara Schoenberg and Portrait By Brian Cassella | June 7, 2012

Ladies and gentlemen, let's compare and contrast. In her blockbuster first novel, "A Woman of Substance," Barbara Taylor Bradford pitted her fiercely determined heroine against almost insurmountable obstacles: grinding poverty, physical abuse, sexual assault, romantic betrayal, and the machinations of a powerful and pitiless nemesis. In her latest book, "Letter from A Stranger," Bradford's sweet and accommodating heroine lives a charmed life, her manners flawless, her profession glamorous, her predicament such that she is forced -- just forced!

"The Silence of the Lambs" star Anthony Hopkins may be returning to villainous territory, as he's in negotiations to play the baddie in Summit Entertainment's sequel "Red 2." Hopkins will have to navigate production dates on "Thor 2," in which he'll reprise his role as the protag's one-eyed father. Dean Parisot is directing "Red 2," which stars Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich, as well as franchise newcomers Catherine Zeta-Jones and Byung-hun Lee. Hopkins is in talks to play a genius, long thought dead, who creates a weapon of mass destruction called Nightshade.

"District 9" star Sharlto Copley has been offered the villain role in Spike Lee's "Oldboy" and is in early talks to join Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen in Mandate Pictures' revenge thriller. Copley is also set to star in Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego's "Open Grave," which shoots this May in Hungary. Based on Chan-wook Park's South Korean film, "Oldboy" stars Brolin as a man who is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years for unknown reasons. When inexplicably released, he sets out to find out who held him hostage and why. Copley is in early talks to play a mysterious billionaire out to destroy the protag's life, while Olsen will play a caseworker who helps Brolin's character investigate the past.

* Ex-doorman turned Islamist cleric to face U.S. trial * Serious agenda seen behind fiery rhetoric * Gained influence as London welcomed dissident Muslims By Michael Holden LONDON, April 10 (Reuters) - With a metal hook in place of his right hand and missing an eye, Abu Hamza al-Masri's tabloid image as a James Bond villain belies a much more sinister influence. From Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the Sept. 11 conspirators, and convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, to the men who plotted suicide bomb attacks on London in 2005, Hamza is accused of influencing some of the world's most high-profile militants of recent times.

With the (supposed) final installment of the "Harry Potter" series premiering today, moviegoers will say goodbye to a host of baddies they've grown to love to hate. And as we bid adieu to Fenrir Greyback and Argus Filch, I ponder this question—what type of people, fictional or not, named these guys? If you name a child Barty Crouch, you can't envision him as a great humanitarian, can you? Nobody names a baby girl Bellatrix Lestrange and expects her to turn out to be a loving homemaker.

— Digital entertainment has shaken the retail industry, shuttering your local brick-and-mortar record store, bookseller and video rental outlets. Could the neighborhood comic bookshop be next? Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. hopes not. The Maryland company is the country's largest distributor of comics to roughly 2,700 small retailers. It has been fighting the same forces — online sales, changing consumer habits and even digital piracy — that are pushing other retailers to the brink.

"It is family legend," says artist Joe Staton, "that I was trying to copy Chester Gould's Tracy from the Sunday papers before I was actually able to read. " During writer Mike Curtis' early childhood commutes with his parents, "The best way to keep me quiet was to buy me a comic book. At the time, Harvey Comics was reprinting Dick Tracy, and one issue would keep me occupied for hours. " Makes sense that the duo would find their way back to the cartoon detective, separated by a combined 60 years in comics, which included work on "Casper the Friendly Ghost," "The Green Lantern," "Richie Rich" and "Scooby Doo. " Their inaugural effort as the new creative team of "Dick Tracy" can be found in newspaper comics pages this week.

No author in his right mind would kill off a main character in the prime of a promising new series. Intellectually, you know this. How, then, does David Ellis, author of the compelling new legal thriller "Breach of Trust" (Putnam), pull it off? How does he write a scene in which Jason Kolarich — the two-fisted, headstrong hero of a crime novel set in a city that's a dead ringer for Chicago — looks to be doomed, mere seconds from violent extermination at the hands of a bunch of bloodthirsty goons?